Pretty Wizard

Pretty Wizard is an actual-play fantasy podcast that keeps the whole table on the recording: the story, the dice, the rules checks and the jokes in between. DM Kane runs the game. Across from him, Ryan Neitze plays Marco Ollivant, Jonathan plays Abzeel Ashclaw, and Donovan plays Leaf, a wood elf druid. Chapter episodes open on a 'Last time on Pretty Wizard' recap, a string of lines from earlier play, before the new session picks up. What follows leans hard into combat and the grotesque. Harold flickers out of existence and back, once with a second head growing out of him and once with his jaw gone. A flesh golem turns out to be a rigid arcane model that flickers at a touch. Elsewhere, a mountain of loosely patched flesh in red leather armor stares out with soulless eyes and says one word: trophies. The strangeness also gets quieter. One character lands in a purple field of blue nodes, each holding a still image of a being, with one brighter and taller than the rest. The players meet all of it with rolls to hit, dexterity saves, damage dice and arithmetic worked out loud until it checks out. The campaign runs on a fracture. Friends turn on each other, and Leaf ends up facing companions the narration calls once-friends. Transformations break out mid-fight, from a character turning into a tiger to wings sprouting in the middle of a battle. A run of chapters titled The Last Hope carries that split through heavy combat. One scene sends Marco down to a dinghy and aboard a ship with Ash Claw across its bow, where Nala welcomes him as captain. The show also steps outside the fiction. The Talking Wizard episodes are cast reflections, where the players and their DM look back at choices, rolls and turning points. In one, they trace the party's infighting to a prop: a message carried by a flying snake, which Jonathan decided to keep secret. They also mention recording the show three different times, with alternate versions where the party got along far better. The talk around the table is profane, quick and full of teasing, and the cast cheerfully admits it is bad at ending an episode.